I see Subway as a sandwich bar where they drown you with options. Yes, I am glad to micro-manage my sandwich. But the choices and the questions intimidate most of their customers. Add the Indian sense of indecisiveness and you have a potent Mexican standoff at the counter before you can say Chipotle Southwest. They […]

It’s air, you know. It’s just there. There’s no choice. You have to breathe, so you have to use Helvetica. – Erik Spiekerman Let me start with a quick bit of history. When a German blacksmith Johannes Gutenberg created the printing press in mid-15th century he also invented the first printable typeface now called Blackletter. […]

Fail often so you can succeed sooner. – Tom Kelley While in this World all and sundry are touting design thinking, while I have started to get uncomfortable with the term as much as I am uncomfortable with ‘innovation’, there are a few who can pragmatically break it down for us. Tom Kelley, a pioneer and […]

While we were leading a rather sedate life in the 70s, the new Indira Gandhi cabinet of 1980 decide to bring colour television to our homes for the Asiad Games. My father bought one in 1983. So as a teen I was exposed to a new kind of cinema in the early eighties, typically broadcast […]

I recently learned about an important feature that distinguishes us human beings, right on top with our opposable thumbs and standing upright – the prefrontal cortex. The prefrontal cortex, among many things it does, enables us to simulate experiences. Or in other words, it helps us create narratives or tell stories. And we human beings […]

I have a problem when people say something’s real or not real, or normal or abnormal. The meaning of those words for me is very personal and subjective. — Tim Burton His love for the macabre, the twisted reality and Johnny Depp has defined his movies. Tim Burton had to prise himself away from Disney […]

Ages ago, in a darkened design school auditorium I have had the privilege of watching movie titles designed by Saul and Elaine Bass. I was amazed by paper cut animation of Anatomy of a Murder and the slow motion catwalk of Walk on the Wild Side. I found this compilation of their movie title clips. […]

This exhibit is a strong inspiration of mine who made cinematic music into an artform. You can realise God as you progress in music – Ilaiyaraja As the heat scorched the tar in those summer afternoons in the early-80s the rarefied air carried Tamil movie songs to the streets through small windows on either side. […]

Look at us. We do not sit and talk anymore. Our conversations are restricted by media formats or by the distance between our connected screens. Brands can easily lead us to longer conversations. But do they? They give us short jabs of superfical warm and fuzzy potions that are not honest. Recently I was at […]

A friend and a teacher once told me that creativity is about finding connections between things that are not seemingly related. The rational part of my mind dismissed this as superficial and vaguely self-indulgent. But I present you a case where I found a movie, a book and a song inspired by one event – […]